Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/10/2012 - 21:08 CDS Don't Panic Equity Markets Net Notional Rate of Change Reality Volatility
There are a lot of moving parts in the Dismal take of Dimon's demise. The starting point is that Bruno Iksil in the JPMorgan CIO Office, under the premise of hedging the bank's credit portfolio's tail risk had placed various tranche trades (levered credit positions with various risk profiles) in the only liquid tranche market that still exists - CDX Series 9 (an 'orrible portfolio of credits with an initial maturity at the end of 2012). These positions were low cost (steepeners or equity-mezz) but needed a certain amount of day to day care and maintenance (adjusting hedges and so on). As the market rallied, the positions required increasing amounts of protection be sold to maintain hedges (akin to buying into a rally more and more as it rises). His large size in the market left a mark however that hedge funds tried to fix - that was his index trading was making the index extremely rich (expensive) relative to intrinsics (fair-value). That is where the media picked up the story and as we detail below leads us to today. Attempts to hedge his over-hedged positions and/or unwind them impacted the market too much and we suspect created the need for today's admission of guilt. And so, we find ourselves with - net CDS/CDO notionals remain huge (and implicitly on JPM's shoulders), his very recent lack of selling has left the credit index maybe 20bps rich to where it might trade given its rough correlation with the S&P 500 and this would imply at least $3bn of losses already in addition at fair-value. Of course, the situation is far worse because 1) any efforts to unwind such a huge position will lead to the market yawning wide and swallowing him in illiquid bid-ask spreads; and 2) the rest of the world knows their position - so why would the hedge funds not push their position. Note, it is not the instrument that caused this - it is the trader as "you don't hedge risk when you bet on momentum continuing you idiot!" LOL
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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/jpm-staring-another-3-billion-loss
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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